The effective destruction of small arms is a growing concern, particularly for military and civilian law enforcement organizations. Small arms, such as handguns, rifles, and shotguns are routinely seized by civilian law enforcement organizations, often as part of criminal investigations. In addition, military forces often encounter large enemy caches of small arms, including automatic weapons and other battlefield arms. The continued existence of these small arms poses a continued threat to the extent that they may fall back into enemy or criminal hands.
In order to mitigate the risk posed by confiscated arms falling back into unwanted hands, many military and law enforcement operations employ various methods to incapacitate and destroy the arms to permanently render them inoperable. One method of destruction involves placing the arms on a hard surface, such as a concrete road, and driving over the arms with a large vehicle. As the tires contact the arms, the weight of the vehicle bends and distorts the barrels of the arms. This method generally works for rifles, shotguns and other long arms, but is not as effective for handguns and other smaller arms. Also, while this method effectively destroys the barrel, the other parts of the weapon are generally undamaged. Additionally, since the barrels on many types of arms can be easily replaced, this method is likely to leave some weapons in operable condition. As such, the effectiveness of this method is limited.
Another method, involves plugging the barrel and other internal cavities of the weapon with a filler material, such as concrete, thus rendering the weapon inoperative. The filler material, however, is generally less sturdy as compared to the weapon itself and can be chipped or burned out to restore the functionality of the weapon. Yet another method involves inserting and detonating an explosive in the barrel of the weapon. The explosion splits and distorts the barrel, rendering the weapon inoperative. As mentioned above, however, the barrel on many arms can be easily replaced, thereby restoring the weapon's functionality. Additionally, this method is very time intensive, because it must be applied to each weapon individually. It is also dangerous, as is generally the case when dealing with explosives. Other methods involve cutting, sawing, smelting, and fully encapsulating the weapons in concrete. As such, current methods for incapacitating and destroying small arms are time intensive, resource intensive, energy intensive, dangerous, or may not be permanent.
Accordingly, it would be an advance in the state of the art to provide a chemical formulation, along with a method and apparatus for applying such formulation, wherein the formulation is (i) non-toxic, (ii) made from inexpensive, non-toxic, and readily available components, (iii) capable of being easily applied to a cache of small arms or other types of metal, (iv) capable of rendering small arms inoperable after application, (v) capable of degrading metal within a short time frame so as to permanently render small arms inoperable or otherwise structurally weaken metal such that it will likely fail when used for its intended purpose, and/or (vi) capable of hardening into a resin that can maintain its structural integrity at temperatures exceeding that with would substantially diminish the integrity of metal.